


Defrost

by lucifel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, PTSD, PWP, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-17
Updated: 2011-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:41:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifel/pseuds/lucifel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh his first night back in London, John goes home with a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defrost

John has never hidden from a cold night in a crowded pub before, but London - after Afghanistan - is almost too cold to bear. After so many years spent all but overheating, the sudden brush of a cool autumn breeze against his skin feels akin to an arctic gale.

John finds himself in a strange, crowded little pub. No stools, standing room only, and packed from wall to wall. When he first feels someone press against the length of his body from behind, he assumes the bloke is trying to get around him to order a drink. The bar is only a few feet away. John's leg aches. It takes him almost two minutes to notice that the man stays pressed against him. And, even then, John only realises because he's been subconsciously counting each rise and fall of the man's chest as he breathes.

When John finally looks up, looks away from the rugby match on the telly and into the mirror behind the bar, it takes him less than two seconds to gather the man's intent.

John nearly stops breathing.

The man is handsome, though the sum of his features shouldn't be. Too skinny. Sharp cheekbones. Weak jaw. Wild curls. Dressed like a right ponce. Then the man smiles a strange, inquisitive half smile using barely a corner of his mouth and something all together strange and giddy - something like adrenaline, rises in John's throat. He feels a hand stray under his jumper, feels a breath ghost over his ear. John is hard before he's even really made his decision about the man and when he jerks violently away the stranger looks pleased. When John breaks eye contact and starts to walk out of the bar, he isn't sure how he knows that this man will follow.

But he does.

Outside, the cold night swallows John whole and his mind goes silent with the white noise of cold until that solid, skinny, presence is once again pressed against his back like a shield.

The man radiates warmth.

(John wonders briefly if he could get that warmth woven into a jumper. None of the ones he's brought out from storage seem to help.)

Later, John won't remember getting into the cab. He won't remember getting out at the corner of Montague Street and following the man to the most rickety looking building on it. But he'll remember warm lips pressed against his neck and feverish hands wandering ever so close to his skin. He'll remember wallowing in the warmth of something that wasn't the cold London night.

John won't realise, till long after, that neither of them ever said a word.

The first time John hears the man's voice he's already fully naked. His ugly brown jumper and cheap, loose, jeans are tangled on the floor with a silk shirt and an expensive wool suit. His flesh is overheating from the inside out and both his hands are twisted in the stranger's hair. Already, there are finger shaped bruises forming on his shoulders and arms. He's kissed up the man's neck and bitten along his jaw and he is a millimeter away from the man's mouth when he hears "No."

 _No_ , spoken like a petulant child refusing his medicine. John freezes. Pulls away just enough to look into the man's sharp eyes and at the frustrated furrow between the man's brows. He thinks, suddenly, how it isn't fair that this man can look so patently annoyed, so calmly, analytically bored when John himself was one kiss away from losing all reason. When he can barely focus his mind through the heavy pounding of blood through his veins. John finds that he is suddenly, inexplicably angry at the man he has pressed against the door.

The anger sharpens his mind, pulls him away from the puddle of heat that he'd been melting into.

John begins to develop a suspicion.

John lets go of the man's hair, tugs him away from the door. He pushes the man down roughly so that he lands on his stomach, on the bed. John puts as much anger into the movement as he can summon. Gives the man plenty of time to either complain or turn over.

The man does neither.

The sheets are black.

The room is mostly dark.

John doesn't see the sharp vicious smirk start to form on his companion's mouth.

His companion doesn't see John pick up one of their belts, (thin, black, expensive leather, not John's,) and wrap it around his hand.

With one hand, John gather's the man's wrists and pins them together over his head. The man lets him, willingly. With his other, John brings the belt down hard against the man's backside. The man gasps. His pulse speeds up against John's fingers.

John considers his suspicion confirmed. He leans down, rests his lips on the corner of the man's ear.

"Tell me 'no' again," he says gently, anger tightly reined in but clearly audible, "and I'll stop. " The man keeps his face stubbornly pressed into the pillows. John tightens his hand around the man's wrists. "I'll stop whenever you tell me to. Nod if you understand."

The man nods. He fidgets a little. John feels him shift his hips in a search for friction.

When John brings the belt the down again, the man gasps more noticeably. John knows suddenly - or, at least, he believes he knows - that this man won't say 'no' to him again. John realizes, with a sudden heady rush, that no matter how hard he pushes, it's unlikely that the man beneath him will break.

Not tonight.

He uses the belt like a whip, brings it down so that the marks criss and cross from the man's lower back all the way down to his thighs. John isn't careful about it, but he knows from the way he's wrapped the belt, from the angle of his strokes, that he'll neither break skin nor do any serious damage. He hasn't enough leverage for that.

John works and he listens to the man's breath start to come more raggedly, start to sound more like John's own labored breathing. He holds the man down and aches with his own arousal and lifts his body just far enough away from the other that he starts to feel cold.

Cold.

The cold is bad.

John begins to feel cold and, suddenly, he's not thinking about the belt at all but the wind burn and the desert sand; of the beautiful woman who'd run up to him clutching a child with dark, curly hair. He's thinking of an American named Davy who'd damned near died saving an aluminium tin he'd filled with dead men's dog's tags. John's thinking -.

The man gasps again, this time more loudly and sharply, this time with pain. He jerks violently against John's hands and turns his head so suddenly that John - John jerks out of his memories, unaware that he's been away.

John drops the belt instantly, concerned that he's misjudged his strength, and he scrambles to check the marks he's left. He has never found anything so spectacularly un-arousing as accidentally causing serious harm to your bed partner.

"Fuck." He curses, mostly from habit, from memory. It hadn't ever been _his_ habit - but the soldiers, his soldiers - "Fucking. Shit."

He finds only one serious welt. There isn't even enough light for him to see it properly.

"Are you alright?" He asks, pressing a finger against the inflamed flesh to check if he's broken skin. John's touch is met with a hiss. "I'm sorry." He finds himself babbling, "I - It's the -." He's trying to explain that it's the PTSD. That he doesn't - . That he can't -.

He realises, when he sees the man's face, raised from the pillow now, turned towards him, gazing over one shoulder, that the man isn't so much hurt or in pain or afraid, as he is annoyed that John's stopped. The man's gaze is a little hazy, but his eyes are still sharp. He takes two seconds to assess John's no doubt obvious panic then rises onto his hands and knees, crawling towards the centre of the bed.

John finds himself being hauled up, and then suddenly, very suddenly, John finds it difficult to speak because there is a warm, wet mouth around his cock and he's beginning to get fully hard again. John knows the man is trying to distract him. Trying to salvage their uh... encounter. John clamps his mouth shut and knows that he'll never remember, later, whether the man's any good at this - whether he hollowed his cheeks or slurped or used his teeth - because, right now, he's so very, very focused on the heat.

It a warm, wet, heat. Pleasant. Doesn't remind John at all of the dry desert sun pounding at you when you're standing outside the med tent too long because you know there should be casualties coming your way and you refuse to acknowledge that it's entirely possible that they've been killed en-route and won't ever make it to where you're standing waiting to save them but you have to stand there and you have to wait and you have to -.

The man squeezes hard at the base of John's cock. Painfully. John realizes suddenly just how close he is to coming. He expects the stranger to pull off, pull away, but he doesn't. The man waits, shifting his tongue but not letting John out of his mouth. He breathes through his nose and John watches the smooth line of his back rise and fall with each breath. He runs a finger down the man's spine. Feels the shiver he elicits. The contact is good, the contact is distracting. John likes the smooth line of the man's back. Concentrating on the feel of warm skin prevents him from thinking much.

When the man judges enough time to have passed he resumes the blowjob, bobbing up and down, practically choking himself, and bringing John to the edge twice more before John loses patience and pulls the damned man away.

John shoves the stranger onto his back, hard, and finally, finally makes eye contact again when he hears the man gasp. The man doesn't look so frustrated anymore. Nor does he appear quite so calmly bored. His eyes dart about wildly and there's a slight rasp to his breath. John thinks, _he enjoyed doing that_.

John leans down for a kiss, to recapture some of that heat, but the man jerks his head away so violently John bangs his nose against a particularly sharp cheekbone.

That's twice now he's been refused.

"Really?" John asks with so small amount of incredulity, "you just had my dick in your mouth and you won't let me kiss you?" The man turns his head and even though they're too close for John to see his full expression, the _Yes, we've established that. Keep up will you?_ is writ large across the man's face.

John closes one of his hands around the man's cock and squeezes tightly, almost painfully, just to wipe the expression away. He's rewarded with a startled gasp and a twitch of the man's thigh against his own. Just to spite him, John kisses the tip of the man's nose. He feels, more than hears, the man's huff of annoyance.

John grins. He jerks the man a few more times while lapping at his neck like a puppy. He knows this isn't what his companion wants but the man is apparently ticklish and John enjoys the feel of him. He savours the rumble of the giggles the man tries hard to suppress, and uses his lips to seek more ticklish spots as he works his way down the man's chest. When he finally slides his fingers further down, John is startled to find his partner already slicked wet and open.

"When did you?" Which is when he notices that the fingers of the man's right hand, which he'd been trailing up John's back while John kissed his way down the man's front, is slick and slippery with lube. Somehow, John had failed to notice the man preparing himself while blowing John. "How is that even physically possible?" John asks, partly bewildered. This time, the man's look is withering.

There is a moment in which they blink at each other but in the time it takes John to blink for a second time, he finds himself pushed onto his back and trying desperately not to come as the stranger lowers himself onto John. It's too much, too hot, too tight, and John can tell that he's probably hurting the man, but the man doesn't seem to care. The man doesn't give himself any time to adjust, just starts to move, hands pushing down on John's shoulders. They're both gasping, breathing too hard, feeling too much. John has his hands on the man's hips, he feels the man's thighs on either side of his own, and yet. Yet.

John realizes, quite suddenly, that they haven't bothered with condoms. He curses out loud, colourful and sudden. The man takes it as encouragement and there's an awkward moment where John wants to push him off and the man simply doesn't want to go and then:

"Please." The man begs, low and guttural, and it's only the second word John's ever heard the man speak but it's so broken, so completely taken apart that John gives in against every Doctor's instinct and bit of common sense he still has. As punishment, he digs a fingernail into one of the welts he's left and feels the man tighten around him at the pain. The man's eyes are wide open and John sees, clearly now, that the man finds his roughness arousing.

Pulling out, John reverses their positions until he's braced over the man, (and Christ but his shoulder is going to regret this in the morning,) so that each thrust forces his partner's tender backside to slide roughly against the sheets. The man throws his head back, eyes closed now, and John takes it as an invitation to thrust harder.

They continue like that, for what feels like both too long and not long enough, until John's shoulder spasms and he slips forward a little and he accidentally places his hand too close to the man's throat. His thumb presses down into the hollow, his fingers dig into the tendon of the man's neck. The man tightens around him so suddenly, comes so silently, that John almost screams his own surprise.

He rides the man through the aftermath of his orgasm, enjoys the whimpers that come when he bites and licks at the man's over sensitive flesh, digs his fingers back into the thick black hair. When he finally reaches his own release, he's unable to believe that he's lasted so long.

John doesn't notice that his leg hasn't bothered him all evening.

Sleepily, he presses his head against the stranger's chest and listens to the man's heart beat. John pushes as close as he can. The press of so much skin against his own, the human warmth of flesh held against his own flesh, is better than sex could ever be. By this point, the man has more or less passed out and curls into John half unconscious. They lie naked together, uncovered.

On his first night, following his first day, back in London, John Watson falls asleep beside a strange man in a strange bed and when he doesn't dream he assumes, wrongly, that he's left his dreams behind in Afghanistan.

On his second day back from Afghanistan, John Watson wakes up in what he suspects is an illegal meth lab with his head on a union jack pillow and an ugly purple throw tucked around him. On the bed, beside him, is a microscope and a set of slides.

When he leaves the apartment on Montague street, alone, he realises that he still feels cold.

 

 

 

EPILOGUE

Sherlock Holmes doesn't remember Victor Trevor. He forgets, quite frequently, that he isn't lying about the skull on his mantelpiece being a friend of his.

The first time he'd said it, Sherlock had meant it an entirely literal fashion.

That first time, Sherlock had meant: "My friend, who became such when he gave me an alibi that one time I accidentally blew up the chemistry lab at Harrow. (It was Mycroft's fault for not sending me the chemicals I'd asked for. He forced me to make substitutions.)"

That first time, Sherlock had wanted to say: "My friend, Victor Trevor, who broke that tosser Sebastian's nose at Cambridge when the bastard called me a freak and a fag in front of the (incredibly homophobic) professor whose work I'd respected."

And also: "Victor Trevor, my friend, who never gave up on me even when the drugs got bad. Very bad."

But now, Sherlock's forgotten that.

In an entirely literal way.

Sherlock's forgotten, and he doesn't even know it.

It isn't his fault after all, he simply forgets things like that. The same way he forgets about the Solar System and food and, very occasionally, his name.

It isn't his fault, no matter what Sherlock tells people about deleting things.

It's the fault of the car accident. Possibly the drugs. Most likely though, it's the fault of the car accident and the little bit of bone that’s gotten into a particularly vulnerable fold of his brain.

But Sherlock doesn't remember that either.

So when he meets John Watson at Bart's, when he asks for his phone and congratulates himself on deducing the man, he doesn't realize he's forgotten something else. When they sit down, together, at Angelo's, and he tells John Watson "No." Sherlock Holmes never realizes that once, months ago, he'd said "Yes."

He might not ever remember.

**Author's Note:**

> #1 This whole Hiatus thing isn't working out so well.
> 
> #2 Holy crap I wrote PWP. WTF BRAIN.
> 
> #3 Written in response to http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/4076.html?thread=11356908#t1135690
> 
> #4 ALWAYS USE A CONDOM FOLKS.


End file.
